452
There are also no live chickens in the Vatican, though the Pope eats Roman chickens.
The Dalai Lama told us years ago that his doctor insisted he eat chicken for protein.
The United States and China together make up at least a third of all chicken consumption in the world.
43
A mass industrialization of chicken slaughter, as Mark
Cocker has pointed out, began perhaps in Delaware where a local cottage industry
went from killing “50,000 birds in 1925…to 7 million” in less than 10 years. And
then presidential candidate Herbert Hoover in 1928 promulgated the message of “a
chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”.
44
While “scientific” experiments regarding egg-laying in cockerels can be dated to
the 1650s in Denmark (along with the “castration of farm animals”),
45
a great interest in egg development was documented well before the time of Aristotle. Indeed,
avian eggs and human consumption is part of the 2.6 million-year-old story of hominin carnivory.
46
Ancient Chinese domestication of chickens for their eggs dates
back at least 8000 years.
47
Additional DNA data point to earlier domestication
efforts in Southeast Asia. Across geography and time, the chicken has been ritually
and customarily slaughtered, its white meat entrails providing an endless litany of
superlatives by householders, philosophers, scientists, and culture after culture.
Even Thoreau, writing of the cockerel’s crow, states, “That crow is all-naturecompelling; famine and pestilence flee before it”.
48
Chickens have—as do many non-migratory birds—a detectable “magnetic
sense,” presumably to help them navigate.
49
Which lends yet an additional layer of
tragedy to humanity’s behavioral perversion of a bird who is clearly the most allforgiving of any known species on the planet. We have usurped its primordial magnetic lures, replacing ancient natural destinations for these nomadic birds, with a
singular endpoint: torture chambers.
43 Birds – A Visual Guide, by Joanna Burger, Firefly Books, Weldon Owen Inc., 2006, p. 261.
44 See Birds & People, by Mark Cocker, Photographs by David Tipling, Jonathan Cape, London,
2013, p. 64.
45 See The Wisdom Of Birds – An Illustrated History Of Ornithology, by Tim Birkhead, Bloomsbury,
New York 2008, pp. 277–279.
46 See “Evidence for Meat-Eating in Early Humans,” by Briana Pobiner (Human Origins Program,
Smithsonian Institution) © 2013 Nature Education, Citation: Pobiner, B. (2013) Evidence for
Meat-Eating by Early Humans. Nature Education Knowledge 4(6):1, https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/evidence-for-meat-eating-by-early-humans-103874273/Accessed May 4,
2020. See also, “Ancient Humans Ate Cantaloupe-Size Eggs from 500-Poumd Birds,” by Laura
Geggel, Jaunary 29, 2016, LiveScience, https://www.livescience.com/53528-humans-contributedto-flightless-birds-extinction.html, Accessed May 4, 2020.
47 See FoodTimeLine Library, http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodeggs.html, Accessed May 4, 2020.
48 Op.cit., Birds & People, by Mark Cocker, Photographs by David Tipling, Jonathan Cape, London,
2013, p. 67, citing Thoreau on Birds, ed. By Francis Allen, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993.
49 See Bird Sense – What It’s Like to Be a Bird, by Tim Birkhead, With Illustrations by Katrina van
Grouw, Walker & Company, New York, 2012, p. 175.
48 The Mind of a Chicken
There are also no live chickens in the Vatican, though the Pope eats Roman chickens.
The Dalai Lama told us years ago that his doctor insisted he eat chicken for protein.
The United States and China together make up at least a third of all chicken consumption in the world.
43
A mass industrialization of chicken slaughter, as Mark
Cocker has pointed out, began perhaps in Delaware where a local cottage industry
went from killing “50,000 birds in 1925…to 7 million” in less than 10 years. And
then presidential candidate Herbert Hoover in 1928 promulgated the message of “a
chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”.
44
While “scientific” experiments regarding egg-laying in cockerels can be dated to
the 1650s in Denmark (along with the “castration of farm animals”),
45
a great interest in egg development was documented well before the time of Aristotle. Indeed,
avian eggs and human consumption is part of the 2.6 million-year-old story of hominin carnivory.
46
Ancient Chinese domestication of chickens for their eggs dates
back at least 8000 years.
47
Additional DNA data point to earlier domestication
efforts in Southeast Asia. Across geography and time, the chicken has been ritually
and customarily slaughtered, its white meat entrails providing an endless litany of
superlatives by householders, philosophers, scientists, and culture after culture.
Even Thoreau, writing of the cockerel’s crow, states, “That crow is all-naturecompelling; famine and pestilence flee before it”.
48
Chickens have—as do many non-migratory birds—a detectable “magnetic
sense,” presumably to help them navigate.
49
Which lends yet an additional layer of
tragedy to humanity’s behavioral perversion of a bird who is clearly the most allforgiving of any known species on the planet. We have usurped its primordial magnetic lures, replacing ancient natural destinations for these nomadic birds, with a
singular endpoint: torture chambers.
43 Birds – A Visual Guide, by Joanna Burger, Firefly Books, Weldon Owen Inc., 2006, p. 261.
44 See Birds & People, by Mark Cocker, Photographs by David Tipling, Jonathan Cape, London,
2013, p. 64.
45 See The Wisdom Of Birds – An Illustrated History Of Ornithology, by Tim Birkhead, Bloomsbury,
New York 2008, pp. 277–279.
46 See “Evidence for Meat-Eating in Early Humans,” by Briana Pobiner (Human Origins Program,
Smithsonian Institution) © 2013 Nature Education, Citation: Pobiner, B. (2013) Evidence for
Meat-Eating by Early Humans. Nature Education Knowledge 4(6):1, https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/evidence-for-meat-eating-by-early-humans-103874273/Accessed May 4,
2020. See also, “Ancient Humans Ate Cantaloupe-Size Eggs from 500-Poumd Birds,” by Laura
Geggel, Jaunary 29, 2016, LiveScience, https://www.livescience.com/53528-humans-contributedto-flightless-birds-extinction.html, Accessed May 4, 2020.
47 See FoodTimeLine Library, http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodeggs.html, Accessed May 4, 2020.
48 Op.cit., Birds & People, by Mark Cocker, Photographs by David Tipling, Jonathan Cape, London,
2013, p. 67, citing Thoreau on Birds, ed. By Francis Allen, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993.
49 See Bird Sense – What It’s Like to Be a Bird, by Tim Birkhead, With Illustrations by Katrina van
Grouw, Walker & Company, New York, 2012, p. 175.
48 The Mind of a Chicken